Fire in our hearts - The Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTSCOMMUNICATE!Many felt a touch of God’s love. Not all were immediatelyconverted, but God responded to their openness. From thehills that overlooked the festival one could see thousands ofsearchers. So many were on a spiritual journey.New Age seemed to mimic the charismatic movement. Herewere prophets, healers and counsellors; here too we couldfind prayer and music, conferences and festivals; and, for theradical element, simple lifestyle and community.So many had a thirst for wisdom, a hunger for experience,and a desire for a better world. We weren’t interested in simplyfaultfinding. True, much was deception and seduction.But among it all were kingdom seekers and God’s men oftomorrow.Our place was to respect, listen and look for commonground. They counted creation as sacred. The world-denyingimage that Christianity portrayed was not only sad but false.Scripture placed earth on centre-stage as man’s first paradiseand, when renewed, his final destiny. It was this ache fora lost Eden that motivated them, as I wrote in our revampedJesus Life magazine:The vision of a Golden Age! How it captures the romantic, theidealist and the radical. In its purest form it embodies the aspirationsof a man awakened to his fall; the quest for a lost innocence,for social transformation, for an age of peace, for NewJerusalem. 129We had what so many longed for; the hope, the promiseand the certainty of a golden age. We, if any, were the ‘peopleof the rainbow’, the keepers of the keys. Where we stood on366